Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!yale!lisper-bjorn
From: lisper-bjorn@CS.YALE.EDU (Bjorn Lisper)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: FORTRAN Horror
Message-ID: <25461@yale-celray.yale.UUCP>
Date: 21 Mar 88 02:55:36 GMT
References: <24861@yale-celray.yale.UUCP> <1135@pembina.UUCP> <2424@saturn.ucsc.edu>
Sender: root@yale.UUCP
Reply-To: lisper-bjorn@CS.YALE.EDU (Bjorn Lisper)
Organization: Yale University Computer Science Dept, New Haven CT  06520-2158
Lines: 21

In article <2424@saturn.ucsc.edu> haynes@ucscc.UCSC.EDU (Jim Haynes) writes:
>We have to keep in mind that FORTRAN was originally designed to
>make it easier to program one architecture, the IBM 704 with up
>to 4K of 36-bit memory.  I believe the whole idea of a language
>as a machine-independent way to program evolved later (correct/flame
>me if I'm wrong).  So getting the machine-dependent features out
>of the language has been like pulling teeth.
....

I've been told that arithmetic IF in FORTRAN, IF (E) L1,L2,L3 where E is an
arithmetic expression and L1 - L3 are lines in the program to jump to
dependent on the sign of E, translated, except for the evaluation of E, to
one single instruction on that machine.

The instruction repertoire of old IBM machines also had an impact on other
"high-level" languages, like for instance LISP. CAR and CDR were apparently
the names of instructions to access left and right halfword, respectively,
on the IBM 7090. The CAR and CDR pointers were stored in halfwords in this
manner in this LISP system.

Bjorn Lisper